Author William Stringfellow

Challenged Episcopalian Laity

NEW YORK — William Stringfellow, a lawyer, author and Episcopalian lay theologian who was active in radical politics in the 1960s, has died at age 56.

Mr. Stringfellow died Saturday in Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.

A vociferous dissenter within the Episcopalian laity, he fought for the ordination of women and for uncompromising support by Christian churches for integration.

In 1970, Mr. Stringfellow was charged with harboring a fugitive after Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest convicted of burning draft records to protest the U.S. military role in Southeast Asia, was arrested at his Block Island, R.I., home. The case against Mr. Stringfellow and poet Anthony Towne, another resident, was dismissed by a federal judge in Providence months later. Mr. Stringfellow, a native of Rhode Island, studied at the London School of Economics. After receiving his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1956, he went to live and work among the poor in Harlem.

His years as a lawyer active in the affairs of Harlem led him to write

``My People Is the Enemy.`` The book, published in 1964, was a meditation on his experiences and an indictment of a legal system that he said was tilted against poor blacks.

His 1966 book, ``Dissenter in a Great Society,`` dealt with a wide range of social issues and demanded that Christians involve themselves in controversial issues.